Just tried to pay with Bitcoin at a food truck in London that advertises itself as accepting it. The guy in the truck made a few phone calls and then told me they weren't accepting Bitcoin today because the boss has "the machine" and he's out of the country. Very disappointed. Paid with card in the end. Will try them again because the food was good, but shows the problems merchants still have. @Jack we really need Square terminals to start accepting Bitcoin 🙏

Deciding to try GBoard on GrapheneOS. Was using Open Board previously. Have turned off network permissions but I still feel dirty using it, even though it works really well :/

Unpopular opinion: When people make the argument against AML/KYC regs that "we spend $100 for every $1 of money laundering caught" they're basically saying: "we spent $100 on this lock but no one broke in" The whole point is that it's supposed to be preventative. We should be placing the burden of proof on this system to show money laundering *prevented*. The true answer is probably close to zero.

The Fed's inflation target should actually be 2.41%. There are more numbers so it means it's more scientific.

Biggest hoaxes of our time build on a kernel of truth. Money creation should be independent of government. But we don't need central banks. Covid is a real disease that can kill some people. But we shouldn't have prioritized it over everything else. Man pollutes the environment. But reorganizing the energy system around inferior technology will impoverish us all.

I'm starting to feel bearish. Makes me so fucking bullish!

Closed my PayPal account ages ago, but still get emails from them about changes to terms etc. 🤔

A clever UX thing that Twitter does is sometimes show a top reply to a post. I find this entices you into the conversation, or at least reminds you that there is one. I often forget to look at the replies when I scroll through nostr (am using Amethyst).

An engineer friend of mine works at a heating maintenance company. Says a lot of the field technicians he works with were heavy into "crypto" trading, and are actually in debt now. Was surprised to hear as I still think of that degen stuff as moms basement internet randos, not normal people doing proper jobs within 2 degrees of separation from me. Makes some of those stats about how high crypto ownership is more believable. And shows how real and damaging all these scams are, fueled by big VC money.

We are so early. Got chatting to another dad at the playground and he told me he was an investment analyst at some big $500bn "Boston based" fund. Says they just go long on stuff, no fancy derivatives. They analyze geopolitics as their main way to get an edge. The example he used was buying Russian bonds last year because they thought the war would be over soon 😅 Says they buy US treasuries but need to diversify because they're becoming too political (e.g. When US froze them for Russia). Thinks BRICS currency is interesting as a way to hedge that risk. I casually said "maybe you should think about Bitcoin as a neutral option", and he instantly dismissed it saying "it's not backed by anything" 😮‍💨

🚩🚩🚩 "(and it's almost always men)"

RIP Sixto "Sugar Man" Rodriquez I'll be listening to Cold Fact on repeat today.

Sixto Rodriguez: Searching for Sugar Man singer dies aged 81

The musician struggled to find success in his native US, but he developed a following in South Africa.

Who could possibly have seen this coming? 😮‍💨

Cyber-attack on UK's electoral registers revealed

The Electoral Commission warns the public to be vigilant for unauthorised use of their personal data.

"names and addresses of people in the UK who registered to vote between 2014 and 2022. This includes those who opted to keep their details off the open register"

Astounding corruption in UK politics at the expense of ordinary people: Take a look at Dale Vince:

Dale Vince - Wikipedia

- Runs a renewable energy company - Funds the Just Stop Oil vandals - But ALSO one of the Labour party's biggest donors - Ipso Facto Labour leader Keir Starmer sympathetic towards Just Stop Oil, and pro renewable energy at the expensive of ordinary people having access to cheap reliable power

No government is truly pro-immigration (open borders). Failed states dont want the exodus and subsequent loss of power due to skilled people no longer paying taxes to them. More prosperous states fear the loss of power from new people who haven't been trained by the system (schooling etc). Either way, it's the people themselves who lose out. Those trapped by authoritarians, and those who'd benefit from more productive young people in their economy. Governments care about themselves, not their people.

People cycling with a face mask but no helmet is such a great metaphor for how deranged Covid made peoples' risk assessment

The eyeball scanning is going to be normalized way more than most bitcoiners think. Apple Vision Pro uses similar tech for biometrics, and people have been _paying_ to give up their DNA for years (it doesn't get more invasive than that). Won't be long until we hear "come on bro, just scan your iris bro, you've got nothing to lose bro, why won't you do it if you're a real human bro". The problem is not the iris scan itself, its all the related issues of giving your iris up (will 100% be stolen and exploited) to some closed source scam all for some pittance of compensation. Absolute humiliation is the point.

New Amethyst feature is great - the app crashes after about 15 min thus capping my procrastination